Queens are sapient beings.[6] The queen's brain is encased in an armored skull, and connected to a set of nerve cords that bear resemblance to those possessed by protoss. The queen's brain gives it great mental capabilities,[3] but these queens have severe limits to their mental flexibility (unlike broodmothers),[7] and have limited independent thought, analysis, and sapience.[4] They play a limited command role in nurturing zerg nest sites.[3] In leadership roles, they oversee hives and[8] easily[3] coordinate lesser strains.[8] Queens can evolve and grow through experience, and can analyze and relay any tactical data fed to them by overlords.[3] Queens generally can't communicate verbally,[9] but have been observed to converse with other species psionically.[10] They are as able to hear, process and understand terran speech.[9]

These queens are tougher than their predecessors,[3] including an armored skull. At full height, they are roughly 1.5 times as tall as a terran wearing CMC armor.[4] The new morphology of these queens hints at the incorporation of terran or protoss DNA, or perhaps even the zerg-altered genes of the Queen of Blades herself. Such evolution implied a widespread change occurred within the zerg hierarchy, a redistribution of power making them more difficult to combat.[3] When terrans first saw this queen, the universal reaction was that someone had taken a centaur from human legend, replaced the torso with a section of a centipede, and replaced the lower, equine part with a giant crab.[9]

The egg-laying abilities of the Arachnis brood-keeper was revised and altered for these queens to allow them to produce living globs of tissue, which adhere to creep and accelerate its growth.[3] These globs are deposited via their ovipositor, mutated from the one possessed by the Arachnis brood keeper.[4] These queens also produce a thick, protein-based substance that stimulates cellular growth,[3] achieved via mitotic enzymes,[4] which they are able to expel in liquid form. When a queen covers the wounds of a zerg organism (structural or otherwise) with this reddish fluid, the damaged tissue regenerates in a matter of seconds. Conversely, if the fluid is combined with a catalyst secreted by a gland located on the queen's neck (which gives it a sickly green coloration), and forcefully injects it into a hatchery, larvae will be incubated more rapidly.

Like all ground-based zerg strains, queens move faster across creep than normal ground. However, their legs are designed so that their movement is impaired when crossing non-creep covered areas;[3] they 'skate' over creep, which, per the design of said legs, makes crossing over normal terrain more difficult.[4]Dominionscientists have speculated that this is to keep more intelligent queens within the vicinity of a hive and reduce the incentive for them to wander off on their own.[3]

Queens have the advanced ability to manipulate their "offspring";[11] for instance, by 2503,[12] they engineered the zergling morph to the baneling, a breed that can contain its explosive energies until just the right moment.[11] They have also been tasked with the spawning of numerous cocoons.[13] These queens are equipped with acid spines as projectile weapons, and claws that can be used in melee situations.[4] They can also lob spores at their enemies.[14] However, their biological weaponry is mainly used to defend hive clusters.[4]

A Leviathan Brood queen

The queens of the Leviathan Brood are incredibly vicious and hostile. Any creatures foolish enough to approach their clutch with hostile intent may find themselves quickly impaled by many spines.

A primal queen

Primal zerg have also adopted queens, though the brutal nature of primal packs means that queens fill a very different role from the Swarm counterparts.[2]

Hit points

Hit pointregen/second

Armor

Type

Claws

Damage

Attacks

Targets

Range

Upgrade/level

Acid spines

Damage

Targets

Range

8

Upgrade/level

+1

Meta

Targetpriority

20

Kill score

300

Productionscore

150

The queen is a ground unit with an attack consisting of spines launched by the "wings" on its back. The queen emerges directly from the hatchery (meaning it is not morphed from a larva but walks out of the hatchery) and requires a spawning pool. You cannot set a rally point for your queen, they always spawn directly next to the hatchery in available space.

A 1:1 ratio of queens to hatcheries will allow the hatcheries to continually produce additional larvae assuming perfect timing of inject larva, though the queen would not be able to generate an energy surplus for other abilities in such a case.

Building excess queens in lieu of or in conjunction with ground units and spine crawlers is a frequent early defense option due to the queen's ability to block small ramps, attack air units, heal with transfusion and later spread creep tumors or relocate to an expansion for larva injection in the mid-game. In addition the queen's lack of an armor type means that few units deal bonus damage to the queen, making her an excellent all-around tanking unit.

The queen's movement speed bonus from creep is much larger than other zerg units, making it especially slow when off of creep, but is fairly quick when on creep.

Blizzard considers Spawn Larva to be harder to use than other race-specific macro mechanics, but believes this balances the easier unit production management.[15]

The queen forces a creep tumor out of her bowels.[17]
Alternatively, each creep tumor may create a single additional creep tumor, using the same build time but no energy cost. This changes the tumor's appearance.

Queens can target a hatchery/lair/hive, causing it to eventually spawn four larvae. These join any already-present larvae. The larva-producing structure will not naturally produce any more larvae until the total falls below three. The larva count for any given hatchery/lair/hive cannot exceed nineteen, no matter how many times spawn larva is cast.